Most of our emotional struggles, relationship difficulties, and spiritual setbacks are caused by the lies we tell ourselves.
That is a critically important truth—and the major premise of this book. And unless we identify our lies and replace them with the truth, a truly abundant life is impossible.
Your Mental Tape Deck
Your brain is like a tape deck. It can both record and play back, and it has access to a personal library of thousands of tapes ready to play at a moment’s notice. These tapes hold all the beliefs, attitudes, and expectations that you have “recorded” during your life.
Some of the tapes inside your brain are truthful, such as, “You can’t please everybody,” or “You reap what you sow.” Some of these tapes are lies, such as, “Things have to go my way for me to be happy,” or “It is easier to avoid problems than to face them.”
Many of the lies you tell yourself have been around for a long time, some even since early childhood. You’ve listened to these lies play in your mind for so long, they may actually seem to be true even though they are really lies. The longer and more frequently a lie is played, the more deeply you believe it to be true.
Many lie tapes play in your mind without your even knowing it. They play unconsciously when life presses the “Play” button through some kind of circumstance. Unconscious or not, these tapes dramatically affect your feelings and actions each day. James Allen, in his book As a Man Thinketh, puts it this way: “A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of his thoughts.”1(See Appendix A for secular and biblical statements on the importance of our thoughts in determining our psychological and spiritual health.)
One of the main challenges in living our lives well, then, is not to alter the unpleasant circumstances surrounding us, although there is nothing wrong with improving them when we can. The challenge here is to make our mental tapes as truthful as possible so that we can live life the way it was meant to be lived—experiencing emotional health, intimate relationships, and a deep sense of purpose.
Thoughts produce after their own kind: lies produce death; truth produces life.
This psychological and spiritual “law,” gives even the most miserable and desperate person real hope. Why? Because truth is accessible to all of us, making real life available to anyone who is willing to dedicate himself to knowing, believing, and doing the truth.
I want to add one important caveat about truth before I go any farther. I strongly believe that certain truths, ultimate truths, can be learned only with supernatural help. Truth is like an iceberg. The truth we learn on our own from our day-to-day experiences is just the tip of truth. To know the deeper truths that are the most powerful and life-sustaining of all, we have to look beyond our intellect and skills of observation and depend on God to reveal them to us.
Cheryl and Her Lies—A Closer Look
Let’s go back to Cheryl. She was totally unaware of the lies causing her misery. Remember that she was much more focused on the external circumstances of her life, convinced that those circumstances had to change before she could ever be happy again. Let me show you how, with truth as the guide, I helped Cheryl to see her situation.
“Cheryl, you mentioned that you worry a lot about making mistakes. Do you always get down on yourself when you mess up?” I asked.
“Well, yes. I shouldn’t make mistakes, especially the ones I’ve made before,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because mistakes are stupid; because smart people don’t make mistakes,” she said, stiffening.
“Do you mean you don’t think you’re smart if you ever make a mistake?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t feel too smart, that’s for sure.”
“So you don’t feel too smart or like yourself when you yell at the kids or spill orange juice on the floor or put on some extra weight?” I asked.
“Not too many people like fat, clumsy, angry mothers,” she said with a smirk.
“They don’t?”
She eyed me. “You know what I mean . . .”
“No, I don’t think I do. What do you mean?”
“Do you like yourself when you make mistakes?” she said, trying to turn the tables.
“I don’t like that I made a mistake, but I try not to make it the end of the world or a matter of personal worth.” I calmly gazed at Cheryl. “Is that what you’re doing?”
“Worth!” She frowned in thought a moment. “Well, maybe. But . . . I want to do the best I can at everything!”
“And if you fail to live up to that standard, what does that say about you? That you’re worthless?”
“Well . . . I have to admit that I feel worthless, but yes, I know, in my head, it doesn’t really mean I am,” she finally confessed.
“Cheryl, play psychologist for a minute. Do you see any lies you are telling yourself in all this?”
“Lies?”
“Yes, lies.”
“No, not really,” she answered.
“How does this one sound? ‘I can’t accept myself unless I’m perfect.’”
“Why is that a lie?”
“Because it doesn’t fit reality. Nobody is perfect, and if you wait until you’re perfect before you accept yourself, you’ll wait the rest of your life.”
She arched an eyebrow. “What are you saying?”
I leaned forward, looked her straight in the eyes, and said with every ounce of authority I could muster: “You are telling yourself one lie after another and believing them all. That is why you’re so depressed. That is why, to a certain degree, your relationships with your husband and children are not going the way you want them to. And that is why your faith in God isn’t a source of comfort or help. But you can get rid of these lies—and all the suffering that goes with them—if you are willing to put some serious time and effort into the matter.”
I paused and let all that I had said bang around in her soul for a moment or two. She stared back, looking somewhat surprised, giving me that “deer in the headlights” look of a person too shocked to run but too afraid to stand still. I decided to press the point a little farther just to see what might come of it.
“For instance, what one lie might you be telling yourself about your weight?”
“Lie? Well . . . ,” she mumbled, thinking.
“How did you feel fixing breakfast this morning?” I said.
“That’s easy. I felt ugly. I felt stupid and worthless because I have gained thirty pounds.”
“And what lie or lies might be underneath feeling that way?”
“I suppose something like I’ve got to be slim to be worth anything?” She paused, sat back on the couch, crossed her arms, and added, “Or that if I am overweight, everything in my life is horrible. I guess those are lies, really. I guess I’ve always known that, even though it doesn’t make me feel any different.”
“Still, that’s a good start,” I told her, and it was. Cheryl would come to see many more of her lies during our work together. She would come to see how they controlled her life and damaged her emotional health, her relationships, and her spiritual life. She would courageously replace many of her lies with the truth, and she would begin to experience freedom from the misery that originally brought her into my office for counseling.
Seeing through your lies to the truth is hard work. Trying to do it by yourself is even harder. Consider this book a way—a potentially life-changing way—to see your lies for what they are and get back to living your life based on the truth. In the following pages, we are going to unmask the lies that we believe, the lies that masquerade as the truth, the lies that are making us miserable in marriage, in daily living, in faith. And then we are going to learn what we can do to get rid of these lies and replace them with truth that can set us free.
As you read, you’ll often feel that you are reading about yourself, but you’ll see your coworkers, friends, family, even your minister in these chapters too. We believe a lot of the same lies that the people we kno
w and love believe. We also have another thing in common—the ability to change. The truth about change, though, is that you must want to change. Like Cheryl, you make your life miserable, but also like Cheryl, you can take steps to do something about it. Are you willing to do what it takes? Think that over before you read any farther. If you can’t honestly answer yes, I suggest that you put this book down and not pick it back up again until you can.
To be healthy and whole emotionally, relationally, and spiritually, dealing with reality as it is—that’s the goal of this book. If you are ready to begin the journey, set your inner tape recorder on “Pause,” and read on.
Growthwork
At the end of each chapter, I’m going to give you homework, which I’ve labeled growthwork. It is aimed at getting you to do things that will help you overcome the lies you tell yourself. The first assignment is to ask you to complete the questionnaire in this section. Read each statement, and indicate your degree of agreement/disagreement with it using the scale provided.
Two ground rules I would like you to follow are (1) avoid using 4 as your answer if at all possible (try not to sit on the fence in reacting to these statements); and (2) answer from your gut, not from your head. (Don’t answer in terms of how you think you should think. Answer in terms of how you really think!)
_______ 1. I must be perfect.
_______ 2. I must have everyone’s love and approval.
_______ 3. It is easier to avoid problems than to face them.
_______ 4. I can’t be happy unless things go my way.
_______ 5. My unhappiness is somebody else’s fault.
_______ 6. You can have it all.
_______ 7. My worth is determined by my performance.
_______ 8. Life should be easy.
_______ 9. Life should be fair.
_______ 10. You shouldn’t have to wait for what you want.
_______ 11. People are basically good.
_______ 12. All my marital problems are my spouse’s fault.
_______ 13. If my marriage takes hard work, my spouse and I must not be right for each other.
_______ 14. My spouse can and should meet all of my emotional needs.
_______ 15. My spouse owes me for what I have done for him/her.
_______ 16. I shouldn’t have to change who I am to make my marriage better.
_______ 17. My spouse should be like me.
_______ 18. I often make mountains out of molehills.
_______ 19. I often take things personally.
_______ 20. Things are black or white to me.
_______ 21. I often miss the forest for the trees.
_______ 22. The past predicts the future.
_______ 23. I often reason things out with my feelings rather than the facts.
_______ 24. God’s love must be earned.
_______ 25. God hates the sin and the sinner.
_______ 26. Because I’m a Christian, God will protect me from pain and suffering.
_______ 27. All of my problems are caused by my sins.
_______ 28. It is my Christian duty to meet all the needs of others.
_______ 29. A good Christian doesn’t feel angry, anxious, or depressed.
_______ 30. God can’t use me unless I’m spiritually strong.
I believe each of the statements in this questionnaire is a lie, a way that we mentally distort reality into something it isn’t. (See Appendix B for secular and biblical truths that dispute these lies.) Thus, the more you agreed with each statement, the more you were actually agreeing with a lie. Go back through your responses, and put a check mark next to any statement that you gave a 5, 6, or 7. Those are the lies that you tend to believe the most strongly and the ones you may want to pay attention to as you read this book.
Now, go one step farther. For the lies that you agreed with, write on a piece of paper why they are lies. What evidence is there that the statements you agreed with are, in fact, erroneous ways to think? For example, why is the statement “I must have everyone’s love and approval” untrue? What evidence is there in the real world that this is a faulty way to think? Unless you can make the case that it is untrue, you will keep thinking that way, and it will continue to damage you and your relationships.
Once you have completed the questionnaire and written down why the lies you agreed with are lies, I want you to do one more thing—take a deep breath and pat yourself on the back! You have already made some progress on the road to defeating the lies you tell yourself and are on the way to a better life.
2
SELF-LIES
Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self;
for what we wish we readily believe.
—Demosthenes
Julie had begun counseling with me over an industrial-sized case of bitterness. “Everything seems to go wrong for me,” she complained. “Like driving over here today. I got stuck behind this gravel truck. Suddenly, gravel was everywhere. Some hit my windshield and cracked it! So I tried to move over to miss the rest, and this jerk in the other lane wouldn’t let me in—honked at me loud enough to wake the dead! Why do things like that always happen to me?”
“One of those kinds of days. Yet you sound as if you think it’s better for other people.”
“Looks to me like it is. Other people’s lives seem to be a lot easier than mine. I just feel that I’m always getting the short end of the stick. My ex left me for another woman. I can barely make ends meet on what I make. My son has a learning disability, struggles every day in school, and comes home in tears. I just found out last week that my dad is going to need to be put in a nursing home, and there is no one else but me to take care of all the arrangements.”
“And on top of it all, gravel breaks your windshield,” I added.
“Yes, gravel breaks my windshield. If things keep going like they have been . . .”
A lot of us feel like Julie. We think that most people have it easier than we do. We believe that we are somehow uniquely afflicted with life’s ills. We tell ourselves that unless things start going our way, we can’t ever be happy again. We start to drown in bitterness and self-pity. We may even start to think that the future is inescapably bleak and that life is not really worth living. It didn’t take long for Julie to find herself struggling to keep her head above water emotionally, all because she believed a pack of lies—a pack of self-lies.
The lies that we deceive ourselves with, as Demosthenes suggested in his statement at the beginning of this chapter, often reflect what we wish were true. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everything did go our way? What a great thing that would be! Spouses are faithful, children don’t need braces, and no waiting at checkout lines. Sounds good to me! Yet it is one thing to wish life were this way and quite another to deceive ourselves into expecting it to be.
The five lies we’ll discuss in this chapter are perhaps the most destructive self-deceptions of all to the human soul. They destroy any chance we have for life, liberty, and personal happiness. Let’s start with what I believe is the single most destructive lie of all—one that’s rampant in our success-oriented world.
“I Must Be Perfect.”
Jim, a highly successful executive of a communication systems company, came to see me several years ago. He told me how he’d spent most of his life struggling with feelings of inferiority and how he’d tried to overcome those feelings by being a hard-driving superachiever. Nothing he accomplished, though, made him feel any better about himself or his life. In fact, he was chronically depressed and felt little joy and satisfaction at all.
“I think the bottom line is that I hate myself,” he told me one day.
“Why do you think you hate yourself?” I asked.
“I don’t know, really. I never feel that I do anything as well as it should be done.”
“Never?”
“Never!” Jim said, his arms folded, back as stiff as a yardstick. I could tell it was an answer he had practiced many times.
Jim was saying s
omething extraordinary. Most of us feel good about something we do. His answer shed some light on just how perfectionistic he was. “Jim, you know you’re talented. I find it surprising to hear you say you never do anything well enough.”
“Yeah, well, it’s true.”
“Maybe your standards are too high.”
Jim flinched, visibly not liking what I had said. “I don’t think my standards are too high. If anything, they have gotten me where I am in life.”
“And where is that?”
He looked at me quietly, deflated. He knew the answer to that one.
Most perfectionists think the way Jim does. They have unrealistically high standards that they have never met and can’t possibly meet, yet they hang on to them as if their whole lives depended on it. They unmercifully beat themselves up when they fail to attain these standards. Even though they feel depressed, even suicidal at times, the idea of lowering their expectations is blasphemous. Much to their own destruction, they hold on to their perfectionism as if it is the only way to ensure being a happy, successful person when it ensures just the opposite.
Each of us feels inferior to one degree or another, just as Jim does. That is human nature. As psychologist Alfred Adler once put it, “To be human is to feel inferior.” Some of us cope with inferiority feelings by accepting our imperfections and trying to do the best we can to improve. Unfortunately, some of us struggle with these feelings by overcompensating and trying to be perfect. It’s as if we say to ourselves, “If I can just be perfect, then I can finally put these feelings of inferiority to rest and accept myself.” Any drive for perfection, though, is doomed from the start.
What exactly is perfectionism? What are the characteristics of a perfectionist? Dr. David Burns, a psychiatrist who is a leading expert on the subject, offers a good answer:
I do not mean the healthy pursuit of excellence by men and women who take genuine pleasure in striving to meet high standards. Without concern for quality, life would seem shallow; true accomplishment would be rare. The perfectionists I am talking about are those whose standards are high beyond reach or reason, people who strain compulsively and unremittingly toward impossible goals and who measure their self-worth entirely in terms of productivity and accomplishment.1
The Lies We Believe Page 2